Tessellate
by Sinangeled
Summary: Buffy and Angel in the Potterverse during Voldemort's rise. 12x100. 12 years in which she's a muggleborn Gryffindor and he's a pureblood Slytherin and everything is going to shit.


A/N: I really have no idea what prompted me to write this but I tried to kill the idea and it wouldn't go away. B/A(us?) and lots of purple prose, featuring copious amounts of blood imagery. Lyrics by alt-J.

Sorry for such a long delay in writing, this semester is mad. I have been at work on a modern day B/A fic which is at about 14,000 words currently. but I have no idea where that on is going. I am also in the process of slowly rewriting Blindness.

_i. bite chunks out of me_

When Buffy was ten, a bully pushed her friend into the ground and he cut his head. She left the hulking boy in tears, with scratches all over his face that bled as red as her rage.

When she goes to face the ancient hat, she walks slowly just to prove she isn't nervous. Her head is all red and gold, heart and beauty, loyal, it is true, but clearly a lion.

As she makes her way to class the next day, a second year Slytherin trips her in the hall. Angelus wonders to see his classmate cursed and crying.

_ii. you're a shark and i'm swimming_

There's something of a competition in Slytherin to see who's the biggest and baddest. Angelus cottons on to the rules of the game earlier than most. It turns out he _can_ thank his father for something.

Still, as a third-year he's nowhere near the top of the pack. Blood is getting spilled these days, inside the halls as well as out of them. And there is always weaker sport for those who, like Angelus, want to remain on the right side of the violent equation.

There's a mudblood named Summers a year younger than him. Doing nothing, he still watches.

_iii. my heart still thumps as i bleed_

Divination was supposed to be a joke. That's what everyone had said, and why Buffy had signed up.

The tea leaves had been okay, but the crystal balls were a little disconcerting. You were supposed to see lots of white mist.

All Buffy saw was blood. Her heart was a staccato beat and it ached like nothing else. Alien fear was becoming familiar each time she went to class and pretended to see nothing.

The droll professor and his empty platitudes were no help in the face of bodies breaking into new shapes, nor for those eyes like wet gravedirt.

_iv. and all your friends come sniffing_

He had always been tall, but the summer brought something new. Angelus delighted in the way his fifteen year old body moved, and in the way other students moved for him. Somehow he surpassed clumsiness entirely, and he gloried in his gracefulness.

Arrogance became him, and he wore it like silk robes. There was respect that came with beauty, and beauties who were as easy to pluck as hothouse flowers. Girls came sniffing around him, no matter their house, and inside he laughed.

He stopped laughing when he found himself looking hopefully at Summers as her friend flirted with him.

_v. triangles are my favorite shape_

Cordelia wanted Angelus in the way certain women coveted castles. But Buffy wanted to make a home in his hollow bones.

Angelus, she knew, allowed Cordelia to attach herself to his arm if she wished, but his calamitous eyes still followed her like a wolf watching the moon.

She had never been jealous of someone's heritage before, but soon she found herself longing to pour out her heart-blood and replace it with her friend's ancestry, pure enough for even the maddest maniac.

They three watched the balance change but knew it wouldn't last. Buffy, perhaps, knew it best of all.

_vi. Three points where two lines meet. _

This must have been inevitable he thinks, knows, after circling for so long but there is no shape complex and perfect enough for this, his dark and her light and all their youthful beauty skin on her skin and carrying her divine breath in his lungs, hearts beating into each other and fuck- no magic could be more greater than their sublime union.

He's whispering words to break her heart as he cuts off the three words he longs to hear, not able to resist the most dangerous word, even without reverence.

It takes twelve weeks for heartbreak.

_vii. toe to toe _

On some level, Buffy knew what Angelus had been up to since he'd left school but the horror in his eyes when their gazes meet is real, as is the killing curse his companion shoots at her friend's mother over the Easter brunch laid out carefully on their table is too.

It doesn't stop her from hurling the most powerful hexes she knows at him, or from dropping the chandelier on his friend, or for smiling in satisfaction for what feels like the first time in forever after he flees, companions dead.

It's nice to know she's the stronger one.

_viii. back to back _

She's done with Hogwarts and he knows she's fighting against the Dark Lord. What else would a girl with a heart like hers be doing? Buffy's always been a little bloodthirsty.

In his nightmares, she is positively dripping in red. The only thing that changes is whether its hers or not.

He's avoided the mark, instead working in the Ministry, playing at justice, when he sees her under attack and reacts automatically. Another collaborator dead, his job and life certainly on the line, and all he can focus on is where his robes brush hers as they curse her enemies.

_ix. it's very late_

It's four in the morning and Buffy is so tired she's dizzy. Angelus was supposed to be back six hours ago and her mind was helpfully providing all kinds of hellish scenarios. When she hears the door unlocking, she hurls herself to the stairs and watches the night frame his broad shoulders in black.

He's bleeding but alive, and when he sees her his eyes brighten with something silver.

"Ran into some old friends," he says.

"Oh?" she replies.

"The ones who hate us," he continues frowning, "And got saved by those hooligans who were years below us in school."

_x. my love _

Everything seems more urgent when you could die tomorrow, and all around them people are getting married. Why wait when tomorrow Voldemort and his Death Eaters could kill you, right?

Angelus knows he'll never be able to stand up with her in front of their assembled friends and family (hers is clueless and ignore her and his is appalled by his 'rebellion') but he still longs for permanence and a promise.

His family was not so quick to forget their Irish heritage, and so he gives her a silver ring promising friendship, loyalty, and love. She understands his silent plea.

_xi. 'til morning comes_

Buffy breaking just a little and Angelus wears guilt like gunmetal crown.

His proud pureblood parents are dead, and so is his squib sister.

_I hated them_, he confesses to her, _but I loved her and I never even thought- _

He's not the only one with dead family members; bodies are piling up around The Order so fast they might as well use them as a barricade. There's no end at the light of the tunnel and death is dogging everyone they love. Buffy knows the future and it's panted red. She has her graveyard boy but what comes next?

_xii. let's tessellate_

The monster is dead and people are dancing in the streets, owls flying everywhere, celebrations threatening to reveal their society, but no one can bring themselves to care, least of all Buffy and Angelus.

If their joy is more subdued, it is no less honest, but they bear more scars and know what this peace has cost better than most. Buffy had been friendly with Lily Potter.

"Let's leave forever," she whispers into his skin.

They've given enough blood to England, he thinks, and he's always been selfish.

"Sure," he replies, planning a gold-drenched life with his gory girl.

"Sure."


End file.
